The 5 Most Half-Assed Monsters in Movie History
You wouldn't think it would be that hard to come up with a movie monster. You just take what people are already afraid of, and make it either bigger, stronger or uglier. People are scared of crime, so you make a movie about a super-strong killer with a messed-up face behind a hockey mask. Boom. Collect your money.
But some writers seem to struggle with this concept. Badly. So, you wind up with movies like...
#5.
The Gingerdead Man
The Monster:
Pastry.
Why it Could Have Been Scary
Six words: Gary Busey is the Gingerdead Man. Picture it: Busey dressed up in a gingerbread man costume, hacking, slashing and making pastry-based puns along the way. You can't imagine the amount of money we would have paid to see that. Actually, you probably could have imagined it (it's four dollars).
"I don't know where I am right now!"
Why it Wasn't
Well Gary Busey is the Gingerdead Man, kind of. Gary only appears in the movie's first five minutes as the world's worst robber: He enters a diner, riffles through the cash register but takes no money, shoots people instead, gets caught and, in the end, is sent to the electric chair. So what we get from then on is a very, very shitty puppet voiced by Gary Busey.
And to transform Gary Busey into said puppet, we have to take one hell of a deus ex machina roller coaster: Busey's corpse is cremated and then his evil mom mixes the ashes into a gingerbread mix which she delivers to a local bakery. There, a worker accidentally cuts himself and bleeds a gallon of blood over the mixture that he bakes anyway, and then the oven is hit with a power surge causing the mixture to turn into the Gingerdead Man.
Not all that realistic, according to the experts we talked to.
Most Pathetic Attempt at Horror
Allow us to take you to the film's climatic showdown (WARNING: SPOILERS!). We see Gingerdead Man's absolute failure as a movie monster demonstrated:
In order for him to be scary, they had to arm him with a revolver.
Though we do have to agree this was probably the only ending possible ("Why don't we just have one of the good guys eat him?"). Still, when you use "Got Milk" as a pithy bon mot in your screenplay, you officially must turn in your Writer's Guild Card. It's true, look it up.
#4.
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
The Monster:
Yes, a bed that eats people.
Why it Could Have Been Scary
Successful horror often makes us afraid of everyday, mundane things. Jaws brought terror to swimming in the ocean. The Blair Witch Project spooked us out of any future camping trips. The Ring exploited our natural fear of wet children. So the people behind Death Bed must have thought, "What's something people do every day? Sleep! Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. It's like Hannibal Lecter meets IKEA. Bang, done. Someone pass the cocaine."
Why it Wasn't
To capture its prey, the bed possesses all the wily powers of, well, a bed: cuddliness, soft pillows and 1,000 thread count sheets. Luckily for the ravenous bed, a bevy of horny, and somewhat unattractive, youngsters come upon its spooky old mansion and say, "See that run-down, abandoned mansion stinking with the smells of death and demonic digestive juices? We should totally FUCK in there!"
And there is nothing that gives the murderous bed the munchies like a couple of hormonal kids doing it right on top of him. Can you blame him? His food of choice is fornicating right on his face. Imagine a Whopper giving a blow job to a corn dog on your face, and see if you don't get a little peckish.
You'd think all these randy teens would stop going to the house, where all their horny friends don't return from, and check into a motel instead. But let's face it; getting eaten by a bed is still more appealing than lying down on a urine-soaked Motel 6 mattress.
Most Pathetic Attempt at Horror
Knives cannot defeat it! After the guy strikes the bed, we're treated to the slowest, dullest sequence in horror film history. There is some very subtle acting going on here, and by "subtle" we mean "almost comatose." At the sight of his dissolved hands, the "actor" summons up all the emotional devastation of a guy who just realized the pizza delivery man forgot the crazy bread.
"Oh no, not my favorite hands!"
If that wasn't enough Death Bed for you, feel free to enjoy this clip, in which two guys and one awesome mustache get attacked by a deck of playing cards, and then shoot themselves in the crotch repeatedly with a pistol. In a movie called Death Bed, it probably makes total sense in context.
#3.
The Mangler
The Monster:
A laundry folding machine.
Why It Could Have Been Scary
The Mangler is based on a Stephen King short story, and everybody loves Stephen King. Maybe too much; there was a long stretch in King's career where he'd just shit into a fax machine and send it to his publisher with a note reading, "Print this!"
And they did. And then Hollywood filmed the shit Stephen shat.
"Hey, stay on the line, I'm about to pinch off another bestseller."
That was the case with The Mangler, a tale that appeared in one of King's collections of short stories. As in, this was one of those ideas even he didn't think could be stretched into a whole novel. Kind of makes you wonder why...
Why it Isn't Scary
In the film, you have to actually feed yourself to the demonically possessed laundry folding machine. It doesn't sneak into your house, it doesn't tail you in a car and it doesn't creep up on you while you're having sex with your girlfriend in the woods. Quite simply, you must give the Mangler permission to kill you by inserting yourself into the machine.
That's not a monster, that's a pretty standard laundry folding machine. There are far more scary industrial machines that exist in the real world, like metal presses and lumber claws. You know 118 lumberjacks per 100,000 die every year, and lumberjacking equipment isn't even demonically possessed. By our count, the Mangler only takes out a few rather pointless lives. Hey Mangler, call us when you grow a pair of nuts.
Most Pathetic Attempt at Horror
Watch as a middle-aged woman sticks her hand into the Mangler's mouth, over and over, taunting it.
The way we figure, the lady was asking for it. Good news: She's totally eligible for workers comp. Bad news: She's the size and shape of a t-shirt. As for the insane old man on the catwalk? The one with robot legs? We think he just wandered in from a different movie.
ReplyActually, the short story for the Mangler was scary as fuck. The movie looks stupid though, no one in the story started to taunt the damn thing, and some old lady was killed accidentally. Near the end of the book victims were violently sucked in and killed in a bloody mess.
Also, in the short story they got a technican to look at the folder and as soon as the second person was killed they refused to use the machine again.
Gary Busey should've been the antagonist in The Gingerdead Man. that s**t would've been creepy enough.
ReplyI love that Cracked used #5. Did they not realize that the movie is intentionally cheesy? Heck, it has 2 sequels.
ReplyI couldn't stop laughing when the f*****g moron stuck his head in the elevator.
ReplyStephen king is awesome. If the movies end up sucking, that's not HIS fault. Try blaming it on the directors who change crap around. They routinely make boys from his novels into girls, bad people into aliens, and give disneyfied endings where the characters DON'T die. That isn't King's Fault. If you don't kill the character that makes the book scary by dying... then DUH the movie won't be as scary as the book.
ReplyThe Mangler and Mangler Reborn were good for fans of King and Mega violence
ReplyEven if King did s**t out his stories, they would still be pretty scary. In the article they said that the Gingerbread Man was a Busey-voiced puppet, but I am almost 100% sure that is just a nude Gary Busey covered with brown paint.
ReplyKing's early short stories are more powerful than many of his novels. Night Shift may well be the best thing he's ever written.
ReplyNight Shift is easily my favorite King book. It's a shame that so many of those great stories were turned into to terrible movies. The Lawnmower Man had nothing to do with the short story and The Mangler, Graveyard Shift, and Maximum Overdrive are all complete crap. Children of The Corn is probably the only one close to the actual story and it isn't exactly a classic.
Maximum Overdrive (the movie) was not scary, but it was kind of fun.
Robert Englund could make a movie about a puppy eating giant cheese pizza monster and I would still love it. Robert Englund is the s**t, and, therefore, I like The Mangler.
Reply#3 reminds me of that one Family Guy clip with Stephen King about the Lamp Monster. So lol!
ReplyGary Busey needs the money every now and then huh.
ReplyI would reccomend 'The Godmonster of Indian Flats" It's a deformed sheep that kinda sorta walks on two legs. At one point it bursts into a children's picnic and eats... their hotdogs.
Replysaw it on FearNET
I'm pretty sure that the elevator at work is evil. It always smells like piss and plays horrible music. Also, the Close Doors button is a troll device.
Reply"There, a worker accidentally cuts himself and bleeds a gallon of blood over the mixture that he bakes anyway..."
ReplyEw. Where's the health department when you need it?
Ah yes, as a kid I visited "Old Tuscon" movie set in Arizona, and they had just finished filming "Night of the Lepus" there. They were trying to promote it, but you could tell that they already knew it was a POS, but people weren't making westerns then, so they weren't being picky.
ReplyWheres the farting/highly flammable sheep from Black Sheep?
ReplyThey are not here cause that movie was actually good, comical, and badass monsters humanoid sheep. And besides it was not trying to be a complete horror movie, it was, like I said, a comical horror.
Ikr same thing for Godmonster a serious horror film with no comedy value at all about a giant monster sheep
Where's a holy hand-grenade when you really need it?
ReplyOH noes the large bunny rabbits that are barely the size of a 13 year old RUN!!!
ReplyI remember in an episode of "Everybody Hates Chris" Chris's dad Julius was scared of rabbits because he saw Night of the Lepus. That cracked me up.
ReplyThe Gingerdead man couldn't aim for shit.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesAnd the guy below me needs counseling.
you right he needs major counseling
...and heavy medication.
Yes, but I have to give him credit for creativity!